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By: Courtney H https://conservationbytes.com/2015/01/30/whats-in-a-name-the-dingos-sorry-saga/#comment-67243
Mon, 02 Feb 2015 22:55:35 +0000http://conservationbytes.com/?p=16464#comment-67243Very simply, well said! The human dimensions, and more pointedly the socio-political dimensions, is the root of the problem here. How people frame dingoes and the cultural values or lack thereof is the real problem. As a human dimensional researcher I think this is one of your best pieces! Thank you!

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By: Matt Hayward https://conservationbytes.com/2015/01/30/whats-in-a-name-the-dingos-sorry-saga/#comment-67040
Sat, 31 Jan 2015 09:52:52 +0000http://conservationbytes.com/?p=16464#comment-67040I’m also interested to know which side of this ‘political’ debate you’ve allocated to me Corey as I have members of both teams abusing me for calling your beloved indices into question. Your paper also utterly ignored the entire section we allocated to extolling the values of dingoes even if they don’t perform the mesopredator suppression you want them to.

Our paper aimed to explain how two groups of scientists who we viewed as honest could come up with diametrically opposed results. We believe this is because the methods are rubbish, and our response to your paper illustrates there is a large audience of international experts who agree. It is disappointing that the Journal hasn’t released both articles simultaneously as they said they would, so now folks must rely on politicised propaganda via blogs that lack peer review.

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By: Dayna https://conservationbytes.com/2015/01/30/whats-in-a-name-the-dingos-sorry-saga/#comment-66998
Sat, 31 Jan 2015 04:18:04 +0000http://conservationbytes.com/?p=16464#comment-66998Around rural towns, how often are the ‘wild dogs’ peoples pets running loose of a night time? They don’t have to be wild or even strays – they can be owned and still cause trouble.

Something else I find hard to reconcile in my mind is how some people still think the way to manage stock is to eradicate any possible competition and predator. We’ve been domesticating sheep and cattle for centuries – we’ve taken the cow’s best defence by de-horning them, or breed some animals without horns to reduce our chance of being injured – all with the assumption that we’ll be able to protect the herd/flock and all they have to worry about is growing quickly &/or producing offspring so we can eat them.
Even after 200+ years of trying, this strategy hasn’t worked quite the way we thought it should, yet we keep on with the same plan. It’s expensive, and damages ecosystems when we keep trying to killing everything. Maybe it’s time for a change of tack?

Hi Chris, there have been many theories as to why canids (and particularly wolves, coyotes, African wild dogs and dingoes) elicit such a stronger response than felids. Possibilities include:

1. The similarities between canids and humans (e.g. social, intelligent, cooperative, but this breaks down when including lions – although these too are hated when humans have to live with them)
2. As you point out, the familiarity with canids due to our 20,000 year history of domesticated dogs (compare with domestic cats, which were domesticated only a few thousand years ago and their close cousins, caracals/wildcats/servals etc.)
3. The face shape: dogs have long snouts, cats short so the latter apparently look cuter (there’s psychological research on this)
4. The canid’s amazing hunting ability (African wild dogs for example have a far higher hunting success than any of the big cat species)
5. The many myths and cultural symbols associated with wolves historically, mostly portrayed as evil (compare with big cats which are often symbolised as godly)
6. The fact that canids are in general more adaptable than felids (leopards possibly being the exception), which usually make them more prolific and therefore cause more perceived damage

There are probably many more reasons behind this too. Good question though!

Niki I can’t tell, based on the format of these comments, if you were responding to my comment or just adding another. It looks like you were just responding to the article but since you have a lot of thoughts on this I’m going to echo my questions from my first comment again. Yes, the world is governed by values which are always formed with varying degrees of subjectivity. Any ideas on why the canines seem to elicit particularly negative responses in people?

Firstly I think that we should not get our knickers in a twist when policy makers don’t do what we recommend. It may do us some good to get some training on policy science and social science in general so that we begin to understand the implications of our research and why it is that it is not being implemented.

I think there are various practical measures we could take to align values with facts, or at least to reduce conflict between divergent stakeholders. Co-producing knowledge is one option, consensus conferences another. Maybe we could take a leaf out of other disciplines’ textbooks and become more reflexive to appreciate the dynamic nature of these problems and how we play an integral part in causing and effecting them.

I agree that many conservationists are biased and the first step towards improving this situation is addressing it. Anthropologists are usually very forthcoming in this instance to convey how they believe their own skills and experience may influence their perception of reality – as well as how it will affect their outcomes.

Another step would be to appreciate that other people have equally valid points of view, so rather than openly mocking them in public it may be more conducive to sit down and talk to them to understand why it is they feel how they do towards these problems.

Lots of conservation problems are wicked; throwing more evidence at people is not going to change the deeply-ingrained social, political, religious, cultural, economic and historical factors that influence their values. Yes science is all about the pursuit of knowledge, but what is our end goal? To publish more journal articles or to actually make a positive difference for conservation?

However, where does this leave scientists? If members of the public aren’t swayed by factual evidence, should scientists then stop gathering such evidence? Double their efforts and gather more convincing evidence?

The world may be run by value-based judgements, but this doesn’t change the fact that it’s being run very poorly.

I suppose conservationists naively hope that damage-causing values can be changed with cold-hard facts (although I acknowledge that a lot of conservation science is shaped by the researchers implicit biases and is therefore not purely objective).

One solution may be for conservationists to devise management strategies that are robust to a variety of divergent values, but this runs the risk of creating strategies that are so flimsy that they become useless. Alternatively, conservationists must accept that their advice will create conflict with those with have divergent values. I don’t view this as a workable strategy either.

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By: Chris Erickson https://conservationbytes.com/2015/01/30/whats-in-a-name-the-dingos-sorry-saga/#comment-66905
Fri, 30 Jan 2015 09:00:26 +0000http://conservationbytes.com/?p=16464#comment-66905There are plenty of animals around the world that get a bad rap after they become the center of conservation efforts, but the Canines seem to get a bizarrely bad rap. Here in the United States it’s wolves. People have outrageously strong feelings on wolves both positive and negative and, it seems, rarely in the middle. People are much more tolerable of cats, which as far as I know are also deadly to livestock and much more of a direct danger to people. Any thoughts on why people have such an averse reaction, in many cases outright hatred, to wild canines? Is it because we have such a love affair with the domestic dog and the wild relative is too close for comfort? Does it have anything to do with pack behavior? I’ve always been baffled and frustrated by this.

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By: Niki Rust https://conservationbytes.com/2015/01/30/whats-in-a-name-the-dingos-sorry-saga/#comment-66903
Fri, 30 Jan 2015 08:32:12 +0000http://conservationbytes.com/?p=16464#comment-66903It’s interesting to note that many scientists are often shocked that people do not act rationally or in response to factual evidence. I am surprised that scientists are still under the illusion that facts cause the majority of people (you know, outside your ivory towers) to change their opinions and behaviour when history tells us this is hardly ever the case. The world is run by subjective, value-based judgements, not factual evidence, and the sooner scientists appreciate that, the better we’ll be.

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By: Nunya https://conservationbytes.com/2015/01/30/whats-in-a-name-the-dingos-sorry-saga/#comment-66893
Fri, 30 Jan 2015 06:42:43 +0000http://conservationbytes.com/?p=16464#comment-66893Matt Hayward’s research to debunk Dingo benefits was funded by the WA DEC?? (Department of Extermination & Cruelty) the DEC’s 1080 program poisons half the state and they are completely dependent on its continued use. An independent review of Western Shield in 2003 recommended that the WA DEC look into the positive roles that Dingoes could play in the conservation of vulnerable WA native species. Those recommendations were ignored. 13 years later the DEC employed scientists are still on a propaganda Dingo killing rampage. Goebles would be proud..